Suburban Summer
by Karartegirl99
Summary: Humanstuck meets Steven King's "The Regulators." (I couldn't find a category for Regulators, so I put it as "Desperation" instead because I heard that they were sister novels.)
1. Chapter 1

It was an Indian summer, or, as they said on Alternia Street, it was an Alternian summer. The sun blazed down and could cook your skin if you let it, but in the suburbs people didn't care. Out of the eleven houses on the block, only three didn't have people on their lawns: the old Megido house, second to southernmost on the east side, which was empty; the Maryam house, whose residents stayed inside because they sunburned easily; and number 413, where the grass was yellowing despite futile attempts to use sprinklers. Everywhere else on the block, children were playing, and their guardians were swinging in porch chairs nearby.

Sollux Captor rode his bike slowly, a bag full of magazines around his waist. He was supposed to be the paperboy, but no one bought the paper anymore, and today his load was composed mostly of the new GameBro issue. He passed the Peixes house first. Feferi Peixes was tending her garden, a lush if somewhat over-watered patch of flower beds. She waved cheerfully. "Hi, Sollux. Almost done with your route?"

"Almost." He tossed her a magazine. "I haven't read it yet, so don't spoil it for me."

"Thanks!"

He moved on to the house on the other side of the street. In the driveway, Terezi Pyrope and her friend Vriska Serket, a girl from down the street, were argueing. "I don't care what the 'rules' say," said Terezi. "You just made them up."

"I'm telling you, this is how you're supposed to jump rope," Vriska said, and she demonstrated, doing complicated legwork in midair. Sollux threw a magazine at her, and it distracted her enough to let Terezi knock her off balance. They continued to argue as Sollux moved on to the next house.

Nepeta and Equius, next door neighbors, were playing together with Nepeta's cat. Sollux was sure one of them had a GameBro subscription, but he couldn't remember which one, so he just tossed one in between them. He crossed the street again and threw an issue on Vriska's empty lawn, and then he slowed a bit and stopped.

There was house number 413, in all its peeled-paint glory. Sollux could see last month's issue of GameBro lying mushy and untouched on the doorstep. This was odd, because Karkat used to really like GameBro. Sollux wasn't too surprised, though - the Vantas family had become recluses lately, ever since they had taken in Karkat's orphaned cousin. Sollux left a new issue overtop of the old one before moving on.

Downhill from 413 was Sollux's own house. He threw an issue on the lawn and told himself he'd read it later.

Across the street was the Nitram house. Tavros had been sorting his FiduSpawn deck, but was distracted by the summer butterflies. He'd cancelled his GameBro subscription a while ago, but Sollux still waved as he passed. He reached the Maryam house next and left an issue on their lawn.

Now there was only one house left. He always hated delivering there, more than he hated delivering to creepy-ass 413. It was the Ampora house, and the Amporas weren't friendly people, especially Eridan, who seemed to dislike Sollux in the same way that a cat dislikes a mouse. At the moment, Eridan was lazily waving around a tree branch. He hadn't noticed Sollux approaching. Sollux steadied his bike and waited for a moment.

No one on Alternia Street had seen the slowly growing speck in the sky, but it was there. And as Sollux debated whether he should deliver to the Amporas, the speck fell and hit him, crushing through his skull like he was made of glass. He fell off of his bike, and his body slid ungracefully downhill.

A tiny meteor had left a smudge of soot on the pavement.


	2. Chapter 2

There was not an adult left alive on Alternia Street. The children were more lucky. They had made a run for the Leijon house, and most of them had made it in time - Feferi had gotten as far as the doorstep before a meteor plunged through her stomach, and Nepeta and her cat lay dead side by side, but the others waited out the shower from inside. Terezi did a head count.

"There's six of us," she said. "Who's missing?"

"Karkat and Gamzee," said Kanaya.

Eridan frowned. "Who's Gamzee?"

"The boy who moved into the Vantas house last year."

"I think it's been two years," said Tavros.

"Who cares?" said Vriska. "In case you didn't notice, meteors are attacking us! No one cares about the losers who are safe and sound in their hermit house!"

They fell silent. The group was moving gradually to the kitchen, where they planned to sit down and mood eat. All except Kanaya, who pulled Eridan aside. "I saw what you did."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"You know what I mean," she hissed, nodding to the front door. Feferi's bleeding body could be seen through the screen.

"It was every man for himself. She could have made it inside if she had been faster," he said, but then he added, "If I had left the door open, a meteor would have gotten in and we all could have died."

"You actively pushed her away from the door," she said. "Like you wanted her dead."

Eridan fished for more excuses, all of them inconsistent. He hesitated. "She wouldn't date me."

"Is that what this is about? I figured as much," Kanaya spat, and for once he was actually scared of her. "You are the worst person I've ever seen."

His eyes glared. Without warning, he yelled and pushed her out the door and, as if expecting her, a meteor shot through her. He didn't care. He slammed the door shut behind her.

The others peered in from the family room, but as of yet no one dared to do anything about it.


	3. Chapter 3

p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" They tried to talk Equius out of it, but he was already halfway down the driveway. He looked around. The Captor couple was lying dead next to their son. In Feferi's garden, Ms. Peixes had fallen, the deadweight of her body crushing her daughter's petunias. And in the middle of the road, where they had tripped over each other in their confusion, was Mr. Zahhak and Ms. Serket, their heads burst open from the collision with the pavement. Ms. Serket was still breathing as she slowly bled to death./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" Equius looked to where Nepeta lay in the grass. He went to her, crying and stroking her hair. From the house behind him, his other friends were calling him back, but he stayed by her body and wept. There was a growing speck in the sky again, but he didn't see it./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" The meteor didn't hit him. It landed softly a few feet in front of him, and it was much larger than the bullet-size ones that had killed Nepeta. Something was sitting ontop of the meteor, like an animated ivory sculpture. It didn't have a mouth, but it spoke sharply, shocking Equius out of his mourning. "Hey, motherfucker."/span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" Equius glared. "How dare you interrupt. Can't you see-"/span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" "That's no way to talk to your betters," said the thing, and for a moment it seemed to blur a bit. "I may just be a pawn, but even I'm higher in society than you are."/span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" He started at it, and he saw that it was made of millions of tiny pixels, like a computer screen. It wasn't really there, he realized, but he didn't say anything./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" "There's someone in that house who needs to talk to you," the pawn said. It nodded its bald head to number 413. "Go inside, you motherfucker," it added, swearing for good measure./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" Shakily, Equius got to his feet. He stepped over Nepeta like a hurdle and made his way across the street. The door to the house was unlocked, so he let himself in./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" The floor was littered with pie tins and empty cans of cherry filling. What looked like lime jello had been smeared over the walls, along with messy swirls of fingerpaint that left drops of color on the floral wallpaper. As he walked down the front hallway, he had to step over scattered piles of junk, and without realizing it he had squished several roaches under the soles of his expensive sneakers. He looked through the door to the living room./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" There on the living room carpet was Gamzee, the newest edition to the neighborhood. He didn't look half as cheerful as he had at block parties, but his smile was wider than it had been then, and his eyes were more narrowed than bloodshot. "Hey, motherfucker," he said, looking up at Equius./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" "Salutations," Equius replied./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" "You're the peasant I beat at a chess game once, right?"/span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" Equius nodded. "Several times."/span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" Gamzee fell silent. He looked down at a chessboard he had been playing with. The rooks were stacked on top of each other, the kings and queens had been taped together, and all of the knights had been taken. "I never really knew how to play chess," he said. He moved a pawn forward and squished an ant that was crawling across the board./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" Gamzee pointed to the chess board. "I think you're in check."/span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" "I think you're a plebeian fucker. Kneel."/span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" Equius hesitated./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" "I said /spanspan style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"kneel,/spanspan style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" motherfucker." Gamzee punched him in the shin, and he quickly kneeled. Gamzee stood up./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" Equius was smiling, and his eyes were unnaturally bulged. He wasn't sure if this was because he was happy, or because he was running out of air. Maybe the one was the cause for the other - there was something about the situation that gave an odd sense of closure. The skin on his face was turning a lovely shade of blue./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" Gamzee took a drink of off-brand soda and looked back down at Equius. "Stop fucking breathing," he commanded. Equius didn't need to be told twice./span/p 


	4. Chapter 4

Vriska, Terezi, and Tavros had gone for help through the woods behind the house. Only Terezi came back, her eyes closed and with bright red burn marks on her arms. "She had been overzealous," she said, by way of explanation.

"You should have let me go with you," said Eridan.

"We were the only ones left," said Terezi, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "I didn't want you killing anybody else."

"You're overreacting," he said. "Everyone is. They're just meteors."

"Everyone's dead, Eridan!" she said. He didn't answer.

Outside, Alternia Street had turned into a hodge-podge of colors. The street and sidewalk were made of chess squares, and the buildings had turned into castles, spaceships, pirate ships, and anything else you could think of. House 413 was a ribbon-streaked circus tent. Eridan could see all this through the window, and he saw someone coming towards them from the other side of the road. "Hey, look, it's Karkat!"

Even though she could barely see, Terezi stumbled to the front door and held it open. "Karkat, is that you?"

"Yes," he called. "Now close the door and get back inside before a meteor hits those soft skulls of yours."

"What about you?" she said.

"I can open a door on my own. I'm coming, hold on."

She stepped back. He reached the door and slipped inside, closing and locking the outer door behind him. "Where are the others?"

"Dead," said Eridan. "Um."

Terezi nodded sheepishly. "Yeah, dead."

An odd look came over Karkat, but he tried to hide it. "Alright, well, I guess that can be expected from a bunch of immature kids. Anyway. I have something to tell you guys about the meteors."

"And about…" Eridan gestured to the chaos outside.

"Yes, about that." Karkat paused and wiped a layer of sweat off his forehead. "Well, you remember Gamzee. I think something's gotten into him, _literally_ into him, like someone in a horror movie. There's this... weirdass creature possessing him that lets him manipulate the world around him. I think its name is Caliborn."

"Oh thank _god,_ " said Eridan. "There's a person behind all this. We can reason with him and make it stop."

Karkat shook his head. "Don't be an idiot. When he's Caliborn, you can't reason with him. He just wants to kill people and cause pain."

"It figures that that little shit was behind this," Terezi muttered. "Who does he think he is, committing murder on a scale like this?"

"It's not Gamzee's fault," Karkat insisted. "He's still in there somewhere, it's just that that _thing_ is in there, too. Caliborn lives off of dead souls, and he's using Gamzee to get them. We need to save him."

Terezi was shouting now. "Save him? Why the hell should we? If we kill Gamzee, we kill the demon thing, and then everything goes back to normal, right? It's a small price to pay. I don't see why you're being so stubborn about this."

"Stubborn? How am _I_ being stubborn?"

"He's _killed_ people, Karkat," she yelled, pointing towards what she assumed was the street. "You don't fiddle around with moral dilemmas with a murderer on the loose."

"I don't know how he got like this." Karkat's voice had gone a lot quieter. "I didn't know things could get worse, I really didn't think they could. Please forgive him."

"Forgive him, my ass." She kicked the door open and marched blindly onto the street.

Karkat ran after her. "What are you _doing?_ "

"Fixing your mistakes," she snapped. She couldn't see anymore, so she was walking slowly, unsure of herself. Karkat sighed and helped point her in the right direction. Together they walked towards the hazy circus tent across the street.

Eridan made to follow them, but he didn't get far outside before his foot got caught on something. He looked down. Kanaya's dead hand had wrapped itself firmly around his ankle, and though he tried to shake it off, her fingers only seemed to grasp him tighter. By now, Terezi and Karkat had already reached the former doorstep of house 413. He called out to them. "Guys, help me! I'm stuck!"

Kanaya's head lifted. She was no longer breathing, but she spoke nevertheless. "You could have made it inside if you had been faster."

"No. No, guys, help me!" Eridan called again. Karkat looked back, but Terezi shook her head.

What fell from the sky wasn't a meteor, but a plastic tube of green lipstick. It moved quickly, and at an odd angle, so that it managed to slice Eridan in half through his stomach. His torso fell off to the side, and his legs toppled over. Kanaya smiled and closed her eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

Karkat reached right past the illusion of the carnival tent and opened the door. The inside was as messy as ever, and though Terezi couldn't see any of it, the smell hit her like a two by four. "This is where you've been living?" she gagged.

He shushed her. There was a light on in the kitchen, and they crept down the hallway towards it. Through the family room door, Karkat could see Equius's body propped up against the wall. Next to it was a body he didn't recognize, a bald girl in a fancy golden dress, and both the color in her cheeks and the blood pouring from her stab wound were a shade of vivid green. He shook the image out of his head and kept walking.

In the kitchen, Gamzee lay seemingly unconscious on the floor next to a half-eaten cream pie. "It worked," said Karkat, and he could have laughed out of relief. "I drugged his food and it worked."

"Why did you do that?" said Terezi.

"Caliborn can't affect him when he's high as fuck. Now, come on. Help me carry him out of the house and away from Caliborn's influence."

Karkat picked Gamzee up from under his arms, and Terezi lifted his feet. Slowly, they carried him into the hall, doing their best to not step on the toys and trash on the floor. Karkat looked into the family room as they passed and saw that the bald girl wasn't there. "What the fuck?"

"What?" asked Terezi.

"I thought I saw a dead girl in that room, but apparently she's disappeared like a ghost or something. We better keep moving. We don't have much time."

Suddenly Terezi stopped walking. She opened her eyes, and behind her sunglasses, they flickered like fireworks. "Do you think you can hold all of him for a second?"

"I can try."

Karkat shifted his weight and tried to hold Gamzee bridal style. Terezi, her hands free now, reached for a walking stick nearby, and though she was blind she found it easily. She held it in both hands and stared unseeing at Gamzee. "He's killed so many people."

"Yeah, but if we get away _right now_ \- "

Karkat didn't get to finish. In another moment, Terezi had brought her walking stick down hard on Gamzee's head, and Gamzee, in his terror, wrapped his arms around Karkat's neck and squeezed. They both fell, dead, and Terezi collapsed onto the nearest chair. That day certainly could have gone better.

Outside, the pavement lost its chessboard pattern, and the brightly colored facades left the buildings. The Megido house was ablaze with green fire, and most of the houses had broken windows, but other than that, Alternia Street was back to normal. Caliborn's disembodied soul hovered in the sky for a moment, studying the bodies it had left, before moving on to find another suburb to destroy.


End file.
